


Funerals Are Expensive. Get Well Soon.

by Ribbonsflying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Cataplexy, Funeral Home, Hiding Medical Issues, Hypothermia, M/M, Medical Conditions, but not really, dead bucky barnes, fake dead bucky barnes, mortician sam wilson, mortician steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonsflying/pseuds/Ribbonsflying
Summary: “Is this the part where we turn from morticians into ghost hunters?” Sam asked as they flipped out the basement lights and locked the door back behind them.”I sure hope not.”The men began their hustle back up toward the state rooms out front when they passed the cooler and heard the noise again.Steve and Sam both stopped in their tracks.“Is that-“ Steve turned on his heel and pointed toward the refrigerated room where people’s bodies were stored.“You know I ain’t ever been scared of dead people,” Sam answered, “...but if someone in that fridge is knocking, all you’re gonna see of my brown ass is a pinprick on the horizon as I get the hell away from here as fast as I can move.”===Did you know there's a woman who has a medical condition that has caused her to go to wake up in a morgue on three separate occasions?This is a story where Bucky has that same condition.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 30
Kudos: 204
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Funerals Are Expensive. Get Well Soon.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KOranges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KOranges/gifts), [mitochondrials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitochondrials/gifts).



> Thank you to mitochondrials for all the funeral home info. I asked a ton of questions and they answered every one of them. Any remaining errors are completely my own. 
> 
> And Kelsey, don't challenge me to write a "funeral home meet cute" unless you mean it.
> 
> Bucky Barnes Bingo Fill-C5- Sharing Body Heat

“James Barnes and Michael Roth?” Sam asked, tablet in hand as Steve stepped out of the van and shut the door with some finality.

“Yeah. There’s a woman they haven’t completed paperwork on that we’ll have to return for later,” Steve informed as he walked around the van and opened the back doors to reveal the two bodies in bags he’d just transported from Leaman Hospital.

“I don’t have her information yet. Have you spoken with the family?”

“Yeah, just while I was there. She just passed this morning, but they’re going to do an autopsy so it may be late tonight or tomorrow before we pick her up.”

Sam nodded, but was preoccupied by something on his tablet screen.

“Did they determine Mr. Barnes’s cause of death?” Sam asked, tapping the screen and then scrolling down. “Doesn’t say here.”

“Don’t know,” Steve shrugged. He slid the van keys into his pocket. “He has a request in his medical file to not be examined post mortem.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, but then clicked the tablet’s screen off and tucked it to the side of the van’s floor space.

“Alright, these two and then lunch?”

Steve nodded and pushed up his sleeves. “Yeah. Sounds good to me. You okay with pizza? I can order us something from Stanley’s.”

“That’s fine. Just get us something besides that vegetable mess you ordered last time, how about it? Garden shit’s supposed to be in a salad bowl not on a slice of pizza. Show some respect.”

Steve shook his head and together the two men reached for the first body bag. 

“A cheese and a pepperoni?” Steve asked as they heaved the first body bag out. 

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

They carried it from the van to the large refrigerated room just inside the back door and then returned for the other.

The second body weighed a lot more than Sam had initially expected on the account that James Barnes had lived his adult life the closest one could realistically be to a cyborg.

“Sorry,” Steve apologized as Sam nearly lost his footing trying to hold onto the bag. “Should have warned you about that. You okay? You got him?”

Sam nodded, gritting his teeth. “Uh huh. This guy weighs a ton.”

“Metal arm,” Steve explained. “Cybernetic prosthesis. It’s cool looking. They spared no expense on it. Don’t expect they want him buried with it, but it’s partially implanted so if it’s something they’ll expect back, someone should give us some instruction on it.”

“You didn’t know about it when you talked to the family?”

“Oh, no actually. We’re holding him for now. He was identified at the morgue by a coworker, but they haven’t been able to get in touch with his sister overseas. She’s apparently the only immediate family the guy has so if she’s able to be reached in a timely manner, they want us to wait for her final say. She may not even want the service here, but if they don’t reach her soon, we have the state taking care of it.”

“Okay, I’ll make some phone calls after lunch and see where we are on that.”

The two men carried the second body into the back of the building and into the refrigerated room before placing the cadaver bag on an shelf just below the one they’d placed only a moment before.

“You go update the log and I’ll go call Stanley’s,” Steve instructed as they walked back toward the door. 

“Wash up first. You’ve been in a morgue, man,” Sam laughed.

“I know. I know. I will. Then pizza.”

The door to the room closed behind them and both men split off in different directions.

Steve washed his hands in the bathroom sink.

Sam washed his hands in the sink inside the embalming cooler. 

Steve went back out, grabbed the tablet, closed the van doors, and made sure they were locked.

Sam updated the information in their computer system to reflect that both Michael Roth and James Barnes had successfully been transported to their funeral home.

Steve called Stanley’s Pizza.

Sam tipped for the delivery and took their pizzas back to his office on the third floor.

Steve walked to Sam’s office with two water bottles in hand, passed one to his best friend, and opened both boxes of pizza with his empty hand.

“The Crichton viewing is the only thing we have planned tonight and it’s pretty early. You got any plans after?” Sam asked before he shoved a huge bite of pepperoni into his mouth.

“Work on that piece I’m doing for my bedroom,” Steve replied around his mouthful of cheese. “You?”

“Misty wants to go to dinner at her folks’ tonight so I guess that if we get out of here in time.”

“They good cooks?” Steve swallowed and took another big bite of his cheesy slice.

“Better than Misty and better than me.” Sam swallowed and took a second bite as well.

Steve raised his eyebrows a little. “They accept hungry best friends who have no cooking skills?”

Sam shook his head. “Your mother has some things to answer for.”

Steve crammed a few more slices in between making polite conversation with his friend as they sat around the cluttered office. 

Sam shoveled a few more slices away as well between talking about his family and making fun of his coworker of the past decade and a half.

When they had both eaten their fill, or rather, when they had both eaten enough that they felt it best they stop, Steve placed the remaining slices in a box together and closed the lid.

Sam took it from him and gathered the used napkins and water bottles with the other empty box and took both to the small shared kitchen at the end of the hallway.

Steve went back downstairs to prepare for the viewing they had planned for that evening.

=*=*=

At first, the knock he heard made him look around the room.

It was their smallest sized state room. The family hadn’t been expecting many guests, but Steve couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. 

It was New York City, but they weren’t so close to their neighbors that they shared walls with them. The funeral home wasn’t exactly the kind of facility other companies wanted to abut. 

Steve dropped the polishing cloth in his hand onto a chair and went toward the front door thinking maybe someone was knocking there instead of using the doorbell, but there was no one outside.

To be sure, Steve checked the back door where the van was parked too. Just for good measure.

No one was there either.

Then he shook his head, assumed he was hearing things, and went back to work. The flowers had to be brought up and he had only carried two of the sprays up to the viewing room when Sam joined him to help.

“Man, this is gonna sound weird, but have you heard a knocking sound in here?” Sam asked as soon as they went back into the room both carrying floral arrangements. “A minute ago in here, I thought I heard something.”

“Okay, so I’m _not_ hearing things,” Steve said, setting the arrangement he was carrying down on a side table and glancing around again. “I heard it earlier and convinced myself it was outside.”

“No man, it sounds like it’s in the basement.”

“If the rats are big enough to start knocking, we need to start making them pay rent and do some cleaning up around here. This isn’t free housing,” Steve piped as he and Sam wordlessly agreed to go check on the noise. 

=*=*=

The basement looked as if it hadn’t been touched since Steve had moved the plain, cheap caskets down there four months ago.

“Might need one of these for the Barnes guy,” Sam mentioned as both men looked under shelves and into rafters trying to find rats or else something capable of making a knocking sound.

Steve just nodded.

“I see nothing in here,” he finally said.

“You’re sure you checked both doors thoroughly?” Sam asked, but Steve didn’t even have time to reply before the men heard the knocking sound again.

This time, it was above them.

“Fucking hell?” Steve laughed. He wasn’t sure if the laughter was to cover his concern.

“Is this the part where we turn from morticians into ghost hunters?” Sam asked as they flipped out the basement lights and locked the door back behind them.

”I sure hope not.”

The men began their hustle back up toward the state rooms out front when they passed the cooler and heard the noise again.

Steve and Sam both stopped in their tracks.

“Is that-“ Steve turned on his heel and pointed toward the refrigerated room where people’s bodies were stored. 

“You know I ain’t ever been scared of dead people,” Sam answered, “I lost both my parents when I was young. Death doesn’t freak me out, but if someone in that fridge is knocking, all you’re gonna see of my brown ass is a pinprick on the horizon as I get the hell away from here as fast as I can move.”

Steve didn’t even seem to hear him. He was already facing the door and holding the handle ready to go inside.

He took a deep breath, seemed to brace himself, and pulled the door open.

Sam stood back as Steve flipped on the light, but as he stepped into the room and let the door go, Sam moved in closer and caught it.

Everything in the room was silent except for the quiet drone of the pump and air compression units keeping the cooler humming along.

Sam still didn’t come farther into the room, but he looked at all the body bags on shelves and then said cautiously, “I am remarkably relieved. I was momentarily afraid our cyborg friend was about to come back to exact some kind of supernatural revenge.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something in return, but turned his eyes toward the body bag of Mr. Barnes just in time to see it move and then both men heard the knocking sound incredibly closely. In fact, it came from right in front of them.

As two grown men, they would like to say that they didn’t jump out of their skin, feel their hearts skip beats, and nearly wet their pants all simultaneously, but this was a funeral home fridge and they were only human so they both did exactly that and they may or may not have made small sounds of absolute terror. 

But then reality kicked in.

“The _fuck?!_ ” Steve yelled suddenly. 

“Motherfucking-“ Sam swore at the same time as Steve hurried toward the bag.

“Help me get him down!” Steve ordered and he rushed toward the body bag. In an instant, Steve and Sam had the bag hefted off the shelf and placed carefully in the space in front of the door.

“You think he’s alive?” Sam asked.

“Not really my specialty, but have you ever seen a body move that much after death?”

“Only when being embalmed.”

Steve reached for a zipper on the cadaver bag and realized that the hospital had tagged the zippers on it. It wasn’t an uncommon practice. Often, to keep from getting the deceased patients mixed up, the hospital workers would tag both the patient’s toe and the patient’s bag. But on bags that had two zippers, such as this one, they were tied together with the strings of the tag. 

Steve broke the tag off in a millisecond and tossed it aside. He only glanced at Sam worriedly for a breath before he pulled the zipper back and came face to face with the palest, coldest blinking man he had ever seen.

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered as Steve stood up almost on instinct. 

James Barnes was looking up at him from a half-unzipped body bag and he opened his mouth. 

“C-c-cold.” 

Steve looked around quickly and then looked at Sam with huge eyes. 

“Call the hospital!”

Sam turned on his heels to race just outside the door where the phone could get reception and dialed 9-1-1. Steve turned back to the man on the floor.

“You were dead. You were dead. Holy _shit!_ ”

And then for some godforsaken reason, James Barnes closed his eyes and smiled just a little.

“You with me? Mr. Barnes?” Steve called as he dropped back to his knees on the tiled floor and smacked at the man’s freezing cheek. “James? Stay with me.”

“Cold,” the man managed again and it was exactly what Steve needed to hear to pull himself together.

“Of course. Can you move? Can I help you up?”

“Some,” James replied, his voice strained. “No.”

“Sam!” Steve yelled. “Sam! Help me move him!”

Sam opened the door with the phone still up to his ear in time for Steve and James to hear, “No, I’m not pranking you. This man is looking at me right now from inside a body bag! We had him in the freezer for the past two hours!”

Sam wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and grabbed onto the handles of the bag and maneuvered with Steve until James Barnes was lying in a body bag outside the refrigerator.

Steve went to work. He slipped out of his blazer and dropped it to the ground. Then he loosened the tie and dropped it. He jerked his shirt off, snapping buttons as he went- cuffs popping undone and the front buttons bouncing across the floor around them.

“Blankets! Towels!” Steve directed and Sam nodded and took off with the phone still to his ear.

The metal prosthetic arm was freezing and ice clung to James’s hair and eyelashes. His whole body was pale white except for the blue of his lips and eyelids. It startled Steve that a man could be looking at him and talking to him while feeling so cold and stiff.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” Steve told him as he hefted James’s upper half up just enough to slide the body bag out from around him. James’s wrists seemed to be working enough for him to move them, but his elbows and shoulders still seemed frozen.

James only looked on with wide eyes, darting around to follow Steve’s movements.

“How are you alive?” Steve asked. “This is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Steve worked the bag off the lower half of the man and then instantly started in on the pile of his own clothes he’d created.

The shirt flew over James’s chest first- while in the bag he was only covered by a thin paper gown from the hospital. It wasn’t exactly designed to hold in body heat. Then again, Barnes didn’t exactly have any of that to begin with.

Steve dropped to his knees again and pulled the man up a little by his shoulders to rest against Steve’s knees.

“You’d be better outside,” he realized out loud. “It’s warm out there.”

He started trying to figure out how to get Mr. Barnes outside before he realized he didn’t think he could do it alone. Then he made himself focus a bit more, shimmied down onto the floor parallel to the other man, and pulled James to his now bare chest. He felt so cold that if Steve hadn’t seen him alive in front of him, he would have sworn he had just pressed his chest to the back of an actual dead man.

“You need heat,” he explained, allowing his warm breath to ghost across the man’s cheek as he spoke. 

Steve’s eyes surveyed everything around him at lightning speed despite his odd position on the ground.

“Th-thanks,” James managed and Steve realized that his body heat must be making some kind of difference. Either that, or this was a blanket thanks for hearing the knocking sound and taking him out of the body bag in the freezer.

“There’s a bathroom upstairs in the apartment,” he told James, not sure if the man was really able to register all that Steve was babbling about.

“Sam!” he yelled, turning his head away from the body he had bear-hugged. “Sam! Quick! Forget the towels!”

Sam came racing down the stairs too fast for him to have come because Steve called him.

“Blankets aren’t gonna work fast enough, Steve,” he announced as he surveyed the situation of Steve half clothed and threw a bundle of them down anyway. “I guess that might work.”

“I usually burn hot. My normal temperature is a fever to others. Figured it could only help.”

“9-1-1 thinks I’m prank calling,” Sam explained. “I need to call them back.”

“Call the morgue we got him from. Leaman.”

Steve reached over James’s shoulder toward one of the towels Sam had dropped. Sam knelt down and started to unravel towels as well, packing them in around Steve and James’s bodies.”

Steve reached down to his belt before apologizing to James. 

“I’ll keep my boxers on. I swear to god. I’m just trying to get as much heat from me to you as I can.” 

He undid his belt and trousers and Sam pulled them down from the bottom of his pant legs before tossing them aside and wrapping the towels around the two of them more.

“Call the hospital,” Steve instructed again, ducking his face into James’s neck. “Tell them Barnes is still alive and to send an ambulance.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” Sam replied as he grabbed back up the phone from his pocket and ran back upstairs for the number.

“God, you’re freezing. How are you just alive like this?” Steve asked as he brought his arms up around James’s middle and began to run his hands up and down on the man’s skin. “You should be dead from the cold even if you didn’t die from whatever killed you. Or didn’t kill you.”

“C-cat-“ James tried, but his words didn’t seem to want to work for him.

“Cat?” Steve asked, moving to run his hands up and down James’s flesh arm. “Cat what? Catatonic? Cat allergy? Big cat? Caterpillar? No. Stupid. Cat? Uuuhh. Catastrophic? Cat- cat- catalogue, no. What?”

He actually felt the man’s body as he barely managed a laugh that time.

“Cata-pleh.” 

James closed his eyes, clearly struggling with himself and his nonworking, frozen muscles.

“Catapult, cata- cataplasm.”

James didn’t respond and Steve seemed to run out of ideas as he kept running his hands up and down James’s bare chest and arm.

“I’m not gonna choke you,” he added as he picked up his own face from James’s neck. He moved his hands to work on the other man’s neck and shoulders. “Just trying to warm you up.” Steve’s hands worked quickly over the skin and he would stop at the metal prosthetic limb every time.

“That thing is freezing,” he noted a few seconds later before it occurred to him. “That’s how you were knocking. A cybernetic link.”

“Yeah,” James managed and his throat really was benefiting from the warmth Steve was providing and his back pressed against Steve’s chest felt far less stiff and frozen than it had been only moments before.

“They’re not answering,” Sam announced as he came back downstairs. Steve hadn’t even heard him approach. “I left like ten messages. We gotta do something else. Your apartment warmer?”

“Bathtub,” Steve sputtered as Sam was already suggesting,

“Maybe him in your tub?”

“Perfect help me move him.”

“I’m less perturbed than I ever expected I’d be if I walked in to find you half naked in the sheets with a guy.”

Steve shot Sam an annoyed look until he heard James make the slightest sound that sounded like a puff of laughter and he relaxed a bit.

“Okay,” Steve told James as he tightened his bear hug around him again, “I’m gonna let you go and we’re gonna take you upstairs to the bathtub.”

James didn’t respond and Steve gave a look to Sam before he jolted into action. He let go of James, jumped upright, and the two men promptly put James back into the body bag, towels and all. They were used to body bags and quite frankly, it was the fastest and easiest way for Steve and Sam to transport a man who couldn’t transport himself.

“Please forgive us,” Sam told him as he looked down at James watching them. “We’re not super familiar with the work required for live people in this thing. Kind of hoping this is a first and last experience.”

Steve grabbed his own clothes and slung them over his shoulder.

They didn’t zip the bag this time- just took the two handles on each side and heaved James upward, hurrying along toward the elevator.

There wasn’t an elevator to the apartment where Steve lived, but there was one to the floor beneath it and it would save them time hauling James up five flights of stairs. 

The final staircase was surprisingly quickly climbed and then they were through the door and hauling James toward the bathtub. 

“Google and see what water temperature to use. Maybe keep him in cooler water like when you thaw meat?” Sam suggested and Steve placed his side of the bag down gently beside the tub as Sam did the same.

“What am I supposed to search? ‘How to thaw a human being?’”

“‘How to warm a body from hypothermia,’” Sam corrected and stepped past James to turn on the faucet.

Steve typed away quickly and stepped back into his hallway to pace and read before going, “Shit.”

“What?” Sam called from the bathroom.

“I was trying to warm him up by rubbing his skin. This thing says I could have given him a heart attack.”

“What about water? Anything?”

“I’m looking!”

“Look, I don’t wanna get down here and cuddle him, but I will if you don’t hurry.”

“Yes! Let’s put him in the tub. Cool water. Nothing warm!” Steve nearly shouted, holding up his phone and hurrying back toward the bathroom. The bathroom wasn’t large so the three of them took up all of the floor space.

“Cold? Luke warm?” Sam reached over James for the taps again.

“Cool, but not cold,” Steve replied. “Like you said with meat.”

“Surprised you know how to thaw meat.”

“Shut up. This says that we can only use water to rewarm him if he isn’t going to be cold again after this. Can’t risk getting him wet and then freezing him again.”

“Well, it’s not like he’s going back into the cooler.”

Sam started to run the water and tested it with his hand a few seconds before plugging the tub and turning back toward Steve. Both men reached for James and lifted him from the bag fairly easily. They placed him into the tub gently and then worked on taking the towels off of him. There was no longer any ice clinging to his body. What little had been there had melted already, but his lips still looked blue and his skin was still freezing to the touch. They left him dressed in only the paper thin gown he had been placed in in the morgue.

As soon as they had him settled, Steve shimmied his own pants back on, and took off toward the kitchen. 

“Ask him if he can have milk!” he yelled.

“Can you have milk?” Sam asked as he looked down into the tub. 

The water was starting to surround James and the man managed a, “Yeah,” that Sam could barely catch over the sound of the running water.

“Yes, Steve, he can have milk!” Sam called back. 

Sam watched the papery gown James was in become wetter and more flimsy and he looked around the bathroom quickly. Checking the cabinet beneath Steve’s sink yielded poor results so he stepped into the hallway and opened the closet. He reached for a navy blue wash cloth setting atop a nicely folded stack and hurried back to the bathroom as he grabbed a corner of the cloth and let it fall open.

“I’m gonna keep you decent, Barnes,” he told James as he placed the cloth over the man’s crotch.

Steve stepped into the bathroom as Sam was standing back up and shot him a confused look. 

“It’s one thing to see a dead man’s junk. It’s another if the dude is alive and looking at you.”

Steve nodded and conceded to that in this particular situation as he stepped next to the tub and knelt down holding a mug with a straw in it.

“Okay, James, it’s warm milk and I melted some sugar into it. The internet said it’s the best way to help thaw out your insides.”

James lifted his prosthetic hand from the water, arm bending at the elbow and emerging to make a scribbling motion with his hand.

“Cybernetic,” Sam said, mostly to confirm things to himself as he shut off the water.

“Hang on!” Steve told him, shoving the mug of sweetened milk at Sam and taking off out of the bathroom again. He was back in seconds with an open sketchbook and a pencil in hand and he passed the utensil to James.

Both men watched as Steve held out the sketchpad to him and the man started to write. The writing was shaky; it was obvious the cybernetic limb wasn’t his dominate one, but still he wrote clearly enough.

_Bucky not James plz_

“Bucky,” Steve answered. “I’m sorry. No one told us.”

Bucky kept writing.

_Cataplexy_

Sam had set the mug on the side of the sink and was googling it as Steve realized aloud, “That’s what you were trying to tell me.”

Bucky looked at Steve and smiled a small smile.

Sam held his phone out and read to Steve, “Cataplexy- a medical condition in which strong emotion causes a person to experience sudden physical collapse while remaining conscious; a sudden and transient episode of muscle weakness accompanied by full conscious awareness, typically triggered by emotions such as laughing, crying, or terror.”

Steve turned from Sam back to Bucky to see what the man had continued to write down.

_Muscles cold, bt have tempry paralysis > frozen._

Bucky was adding the words, “ _I think_ ” to the end when Steve’s hand went up to grasp at his own chest.

“Oh, thank god,” he said, pulling the sketchbook away momentarily. “I thought we almost killed you.”

“Apparently it affects 70% of people who have narcolepsy,” Sam informed, still reading. ”It’s caused by an autoimmune disorder that fucks up the neurons that regulate emotions and sleep transitions.” Sam pocketed his phone before mumbling, “This whole situation fucks me up.”

Steve got control of himself and held the sketchbook back up. 

_Milk?_

Steve laughed a sound of relief and dropped the sketchbook by his side again, taking the pencil from Bucky’s metal fingers.

“If you can swallow it, please do,” Steve told him as Sam reached for the milk for him and passed it to Steve.

Steve got up on his knees and knelt over the tub as he held the mug down beside Bucky’s shoulder and fed the straw into his mouth.

It’s a weird thing that a person is born knowing how to drink something, but it took Bucky a moment to work the muscles that it required to suck the liquid through the straw and into his mouth and a second longer to make himself swallow it.

The sweetness flooded his tongue and he forced another swallow and then another.

Steve was about to reach out and help the man control his neck a little, maybe try to prop Bucky more upright to help him swallow when Bucky stretched his neck to the side one way and then the other, grinned up at Steve with the straw bit between his teeth, and hissed, “Yessss.”

“Speech easier now?” Sam asked. 

Bucky held his own head up better than before and took a few more swallows.

“Yes,” he answered with a smile as he worked his jaw. “So much better.”

Steve sat back near the water splattered sketchbook and placed it over against the wall.

“God, you terrified me.”

“Terrified _you?_ ” Bucky managed a laugh. “You thought I was _dead. I_ was terrified.”

“You were pronounced dead!” Sam argued. “What were we supposed to think?”

“I’ve never been out this long,” Bucky told him. “Never made it to a funeral home before. Can you warm the water a bit?”

“You’re telling me this has happened to you before?” Sam asked as he reached for the drain and the faucet to adjust the water.

“Yeah. Lots. Not this bad though.”

“You need a medical bracelet!” Sam nearly yelled. “What if we had tried to embalm you and killed you? What if you’d frozen to death in that cooler?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big fear of mine,” Bucky admitted. Most of the milk was gone from the mug. “My biggest fear actually.”

“Sorry I tried to kill you by trying to warm you up.” Steve looked really remorseful as he gazed down at the floor in front of him. “I wouldn’t have ever risked it if I’d known.” 

“It’s okay. I didn’t know that either,” Bucky confessed. “No one’s tried it before. I usually still wake up-“ He stopped and took another two swallows. “Still wake up in the ambulance or the morgue.”

“The morgue?” Sam and Steve’s voices echoed together.

“You make it a habit of waking up in morgues?” 

Bucky looked at Sam with a glint in his eye as he slurped up the last of the milk. 

“This is the third time I’ve been declared dead.”

“You need more than a medical bracelet. You need to tattoo this information on your forehead.”

“How is this not in your file?” Steve asked pulling the mug away. “They should have seen this warning.”

“I think the fact that I’m cataplectic is in there,” Bucky replied. “But I don’t know how much information they would share with other hospitals. The big episodes have happened in different states and countries. I used to travel a lot with my job.”

“I’m guessing your coworkers now don’t know about this?” Steve reached down into the side of the tub to try to mix the warmer water in with the cold.

“I’m working as a mechanic now,” Bucky explained. “And I’m damn good at it. I make good money too. If I tell them, I become too much of a liability and I lose my job.”

“Do you even have a license?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.” Bucky rolled his shoulders and brought his other hand up some. The elbow joint didn’t seem to be working on his right side yet, but he flexed his fingers as he kept talking. “I shouldn’t, but I do. Not supposed to drive though. I know better. I try to just do the work in the shop and get one of the other guys to do test drives.”

“Have you thought about getting a job in something like, I don’t know, baking? Something where you can’t hurt yourself?”

“You’re gonna trust me with a knife and a hot oven? Or to hold someone’s wedding cake?”

Steve laughed. “Well, now that you put it that way.”

“I’ve been dealing with this since I was sixteen. I know the drill by now. I’m used to feeling it coming on a few seconds before it happens and being able to at least drop what I’m holding or try to fall safely. I’ve figured it out. The hardest part isn’t the falling or even the freezing. It’s not know what will happen to you when no one realizes you’re alive. I can hear everything when I’m paralyzed. I just can’t respond to it. I hear them call my time of death. I got to hear my sister sobbing the first time and pleading with me the second time. I’m fully aware the whole time and it’s like screaming in my head and no one can hear me.”

Sam turned back off the water and he and Steve both stayed there silently a moment looking at Bucky.

“Do you know how to get in touch with your sister? They’ve been trying to get in touch with her to identify your body.”

“I can email her. She works in journalism doing crazy stories for _National Geographic_ so phone isn’t always reliable depending on where she’s stationed at the time. She’s in Lesotho right now, I think. Not positive. I know they were trying to reach her. I’ll check on it. No reason for her to come home.”

“I’ll let you use my phone or my computer when you’re out of there,” Steve commented.

“I don’t have any clothes,” Bucky reminded. “And you ruined my best paper gown.”

“Shut up,” Sam laughed. “You should be glad you’re wearing that. Lotta people come to us bare ass naked.”

“You think I haven’t woken up from one of these spells naked before?”

“Turns out people in morgues don’t usually need clothes.”

“Who said anything about a morgue?” Bucky challenged.

At Steve’s surprised face, Bucky grimaced. 

“Sorry. Bad joke.”

Steve ignored it. “I’m sure I’ve got some things you can wear.”

“Am I gonna look like an undertaker?” Bucky asked.

Steve and Sam both frowned at him, but then Steve picked up the sketchpad and pencil along with his own clothes and made his way out of the bathroom while calling behind him, “I’ll see if I can make the entire outfit formal and black.”

Bucky looked back at Sam somewhat amused. 

“Listen,” Sam spoke as he swallowed and quickly wet his lips with his tongue, “When I said what I said, about you being a cyborg, I didn’t mean anything bad by it. I wouldn’t-“

“It’s cool,” Bucky assured. “It’s how I had to think of myself for a while to get used to it instead of being really angry.”

Sam sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. “So this has happened to you twice before?”

“Not this bad,” Bucky repeated. “But it happens in little spells all the time. I lose a few minutes or sometimes even hours. Lost a whole evening about a week ago. I just haven’t been sleeping well and fatigue makes it worse. Honestly? I should have expected something like this. It just hasn’t happened in so long. It’s been about nine years since anyone has actually called my time of death.”

“What happened then? The last time?”

“Woke up in a morgue in St. Petersburg. In Russia, not in Florida. This cold is nothing compared to that. Someone was in there so I think I scared him to the point that he nearly became the next morgue resident.”

“Do you speak Russian or was there just a huge miscommunication as well?”

Bucky tried to laugh again. “No, I speak Russian. I had fallen there and had fractured my collarbone so that was fun. Sometimes I do hurt myself. I fall wrong or I don’t have the ability to get somewhere safe. Broke my sunglasses once and they cut into my nose. Three stitches.”

Steve, now with his shirt back on, stepped into the room again holding a handful of clothing and set them all on the small ledge of the countertop. 

“I can’t feel enough of me to tell if I hurt myself this time? Do you know if there’s more damage I should be aware of?”

“Well,” answered Sam grimly, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re missing your entire left arm.”

Bucky’s prosthetic hand came out of the water to flip Sam off and Steve rolled his eyes at the both of them just as the phone started ringing downstairs.

“Can’t believe you can hear that up here,” Sam muttered. “I’ll go get it. Might be the hospital calling back.”

“If so, tell them their negligence almost made us killers,” Steve said sharply as Sam shuffled past him and out of the bathroom.

“Gonna tell them _they_ almost killed a man by freezing him.” Sam replied, words just as terse and tense. 

Steve took Sam’s seat and looked at Bucky as he lowered his arm back into the water gently. 

“I tried to get warm things for you. You need more warm water?”

“It’s fine. It’s still warm enough.”

“Do you take any medications or anything? Is there something that can be done to help this?”

“Not really,” Bucky answered, closing his eyes. “Most of it is just getting a lot of sleep and drinking a lot of water and eating right. But that doesn’t cure it.”

“Please get a medical bracelet. Please,” Steve told him, resting his elbows on his knees, dropping his head, and wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Don’t let someone accidentally kill you.”

“You’re more concerned than the people I’ve sprung this on before.”

“You can’t convince me they were nonchalant about it.”

“No. They were just concerned about getting me back to the doctor and less concerned about me being their problem or it happening again. Thanks for the clothes, by the way.”

“They may be a little big. I tried to get sweats and a hoodie and things that would help keep you warm.”

“Thank you.” Bucky rolled his head back against the side of the tub and then bent his knee out of the water a little. “Fucking finally.”

He moved the other knee and Steve stood up.

“You can move alright? You want me to leave you alone with the clothes? You think you would do better with a warm shower so it’s constantly running or-“

“It should just be a few minutes now. My waist is slowly rejoining the rest of my functional body.”

He rolled his neck again and stretched his fingers, even the ones on his wet prosthetic hand.

“First time I did this as an adult,” Bucky commented, “I was attached to a parachute. That’s how I got this.”

He picked his prosthetic hand up from the water and clinked the fingers against his metal palm a few times.

“That was the hardest awakening. I actually didn’t stay under too long that time. But once I was mobile again, I kind of wished I was unconscious instead. Broke my arm in six places. Had two years of various therapies.” As if that weren’t heavy information to throw out, Bucky followed it up with giggles. “But imagine- imagine if I had made it to the show room this time and got to hear people talking to my dead body and then I could have just woke up and been like, ‘Aw, Henry, I didn’t know you cared.’”

Steve cracked a smile too then, but reminded. “You would’ve been embalmed.”

“Nah, I’m Jewish. And I’m not religious now, but when I’m dead I hope they remember I’m still Jewish. Don’t try to preserve me. Just bury me. I’m fucking dead.”

“At this rate, I would be scared to bury you long after you were skeletonized. Just in case.”

Bucky cracked a smile then too.

“I think I can manage now, but will you stay by the door?” he asked. “In case I actually can’t and I crash and fall and need that ambulance for a new reason?”

“I’ll be right outside.”

Steve stepped out and closed the door as he heard Bucky start up the shower and Sam came back into the apartment.

“I’m still not sure they believe us, but they’re sending an ambulance,” Sam told Steve as he met him outside the door.

Steve shook his head. “I guess my late evening plans have changed to visiting this guy in the hospital. Or hanging out here just trying to pretend things are normal.”

“Oh, I’m telling everyone about this at dinner.”

“We had a live man, in a body bag, in cold storage.” Steve shook his head just trying to wrap his head around the things that had happened and he and Sam were still there a few minutes later when Bucky opened the door to the bathroom and asked for help.

He didn’t have a shirt on and his hair was dripping everywhere when Sam and Steve both stepped up to help.

Sam held tightly to Bucky’s shoulders as Steve helped him by toweling off his hair. Then Steve fit the t-shirt and hoodie over his head and arms.

“Leave it,” Steve told Sam as he picked up the towels that had been tossed on the floor. “I’ll get them later.”

A second rummage around under the sink was more successful as Sam pulled out a hairdryer.

Steve picked up his hairbrush and together they made sure Bucky had the driest and softest hair. It cascaded to just barely past his shoulders and Sam braided it back behind Bucky’s head, but didn’t tie it with anything, just hoping it would at least hold somewhat to keep the hair from the other man’s face.

“Come sit on the sofa. I’ll get you some blankets,” Steve told him and both men helped Bucky to the living room.

There was a knock on the door and the doorbell rang a few times in quick succession so Sam hurried away to go get the EMTs as Steve pulled the afghan from the back of his sofa and draped it around Bucky’s shoulders. 

Bucky tugged it tight around him as Steve headed back to the linen closet.

He stared at the floor in front of him. Cream colored carpet and a maroon rug had blurred in his eyes when Steve sat down next to him and put a second blanket around him and then a third.

Bucky blinked up at Steve, the lightest tears glazing his eyes.

“C’mere,” Steve whispered and pulled Bucky to him. 

Bucky fell into his embrace easily and Steve held him and a bundle of blankets until the medical team found them waiting. 

=*=*=

Bucky was swaddled in fleece blankets and Steve’s arms by the time the paramedics finally arrived.

“Will you just check me out here?” he asked one of them, unmoving. “I think I’m okay.”

“Buck, please go to the ER and get checked out. We’ll pay for it if that’s your concern,” Steve begged and Sam backed him up with,

“Absolutely. You better go.” 

Steve glanced at Sam who looked back, pursed his lips, and shook his head.

“I’ll call in some of the other guys to help tonight. You go with him,” Sam directed and Steve didn’t argue.

=*=*=

“Can I try to email my sister?” Bucky asked in the ambulance as he sat hooked up to an IV and with a foil blanket wrapped around him.

“Oh yeah, yeah. Of course,” Steve replied, pulling out his phone and unlocking the screen before handing it to Bucky.

Bucky tapped away on the screen silently as Steve watched him. The man was bundled up in a foil blanket and dressed in Steve’s hoodie, sweatpants, and a double pair of thick socks. The hood was pulled up over his hair and he wasn’t wearing shoes. The IV was taped to the back of his hand and Steve had a sudden impulse to reach out and wrap his own two hands around Bucky’s.

Bucky laughed under his breath and held up the phone where Steve could read the message he had received from his sister many hours before.

_Wake up, you faker._

Steve laughed too and then was taken completely by surprised when Bucky typed back a simple, “ _Ugh. Fine,_ ” and pressed send. 

He held the phone back out to Steve who pocketed it and then Bucky reached out again. Steve glanced toward the medics who were stepped back and watching him, but otherwise not concerned.

Then Bucky reached out with his other hand too and Steve realized what Bucky wanted. The moment Steve stepped close enough, Bucky dropped down both arms onto his own lap and leaned forward into Steve’s chest tilting his head sideways just enough to breathe. 

Steve’s arms came up to wrap around the foil blanket and to hold Bucky tightly. Bucky sighed heavily and closed his eyes while a new feeling inside him began to warm him all over.

**Author's Note:**

> Please take a minute and look up June Burchell who has this condition and has woken up in a morgue three times. Google her name and "cataplexy" and read with really wide eyes some of _that_ nonsense.
> 
> Also, while writing this story, my father had a customer at his shop walk off for a moment and seemingly disappear only to be found half an hour later on the sidewalk and “white as a sheet.” He was declared dead by trained professionals (firemen), shocked by paramedics, rushed to the ER, and this guy legit walked back into my dad’s shop a few hours later. It’s hands down the weirdest coincidence with a story that has ever happened in all my 20+ years of writing.
> 
> If you like friends, so do I and my tumblr is [here](https://ribbonsflyingoutthewindow.tumblr.com). ♥


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